


A Handful of Dust

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Drama, Environmentalism, Politics, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, aquifer problems, is that Furiosa/Max on the horizon or just a furious vexation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:12:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Politics draw Furiosa down into the Citadel’s depths, the Citadel's older generation doubts Furiosa's trust in the Sisters, and a warning about the future sends Furiosa out to Max.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Handful of Dust

Furiosa had learned that Toast had a way with wrangling the endless demands of the Citadel. She sent Toast to the green gardens for the afternoon anyway. “Go around up there and watch. Scout out how the Green Thumbs and the Dag are really doing. Useful for the Council meeting, tomorrow.”

Toast delivered one of her shatteringly sceptical looks. “Where are you going?”

“Down.” Furiosa grumbled, “The healer wants to see me.” Toast left without further probing, and Furiosa was glad. There was still dirty work to do, in the Citadel’s depths.

Furiosa had told the truth about the healer. She went down a Citadel floor and over into the next tower, to the former Organic Garage, renamed the Infirmary. This space was starting to be whitewashed, curtained for privacy, wall-drilled for more ventilation. It retained the pungent smell that made anyone, injured or healthy, uneasy.

Furiosa removed her prosthetic arm and its straps to allow the dry, light hands of Melita, the Vuvalini healer,to probe her ribs. The healer listened to her breathe, then shone a light into her right eye. “You’re where you should be, a hundred and fifty days after those injuries. Bloody lucky. But you _will_ keep straining yourself. I wish you’d use one of those oxygen tube sets.”

Furiosa stiffened. “I can’t be seen doing that after the Immortan. Did you look into the drug makers?”

“Half of what that lab does is fantastic. Blood typing, hormones, antibiotics. It’s probably the only place of its kind left,” Melita murmured, reverently.

Furiosa dropped her voice, too. “How long are we stuck making the chrome? Gastown’s still sending along the ingredients. They’re expensive. We need this off the trade tally.”

“There’s a problem. Your lab workers want it for themselves. It’s not a drug for people who want to live long. Nonetheless, I think we should let them have some, or we don’t have a lab. I don’t like it, either, but I can’t keep this Infirmary going on mold penicillin and sage tea.”

Furiosa asked, “Cut the chrome down, at least?”

“Possibly.” Melita coiled a stethoscope, then asked, “Can we have Cheedo back yet? Everyone likes her.”

“In thirty days. We need her for the Gastown negotiations - _because_ everyone likes her.”

The Vuvalini’s mouth pursed in disapproval. “You’re taking a pretty child to a den of iniquity as a figurehead.”

“It’s not like that. She can talk to people. I trust her. She wants to help.”

“She’s only just old enough to be an Initiate. If you were one of her Mothers –“ Melita paused. “Not that I’m one to talk, today. This Citadel of yours is built on compromises. I’m wondering how much it’s worth them.” The Vuvalini swept out, leaving Furiosa alone.

Furiosa buckled her prosthetic back on, slowly. She was getting used to the new one, after a hundred empty-armed days, and its straps were stiff. After her Vuvalini upbraiding, she decided to not black her forehead, despite her next destination.

She moved back to the Green Tower and descended fully half the height of the Citadel, switching stairs several times, until she reached a corridor where a small construction crew was at work. The stonecutters had been as downtrodden as the Treadmill Rats before. They were working eagerly today. The Ace was supervising them, uneasily. Seeing Furiosa, he pitched right in. “You sure about sealing off the lockdown?”

“Yes. After what we found in the back, YES.”

He shrugged. “Ain’t like we didn’t need some changes around here. Too many War Boys were winding up in there for me.” This was part of their reconciliation: agreeing that the Immortan had been on a downward slide. “We may need it sometime. Road war, something. Never know.”

Furiosa shook her head, mouth hard. “There’s other ways. Got the Gastown crew picked?”

“And how. It’s been weird quiet in the Wasteland, the Boys are spoiling to get out.”

“Hm. Any luck shutting down the blood fighting?” she asked.

“We ain’t taking that away without giving them something back. The Boys don’t have Valhalla. Daddy’s not there any more. Capable’s champion, helps with the gap, but I’ve got two Old Boys behind her at all times after some salty talk I heard.” Furiosa breathed sharp through her teeth, a hiss of dismay.

Ace took the chance to pull her in by her right shoulder. “It’d help if you came down more. I’m your second, it’s my job to tell you when you’re making mistakes. I’m telling you now. You need to think like you used to – you saw life hard and did what you needed to, sharp. Instead you’re seeing what you want to see. You go up in the Green and think it’s all fine here. Like Joe did at the end.”

To Furiosa’s silence, he added, “Too many young n’s and a handful of old n’s here. In the middle I see you and Corpus. If you get knocked out, we’re schlanged.” Furiosa nodded.

“That feral scout is back. Let me know when you want some guards to go on out.”

“I will. Another meeting, first.” She pointed downwards and left, realizing that the Ace hadn’t called her _Boss_ once.

Descending as far as the stairwell allowed, she came to a tight steel door, guarded by two Citadel veterans. They let Furiosa through into the Citadel’s dark heart: the Wellhead.

Its first entrance was a small, dark box of a room, clinging to the wall of a cavern, with another sentry, and Corpus’ wheeled chair parked in the middle. One side of the room was a large, cracked window overlooking the Citadel’s deep artisan well. She peered down at it, a black aperture into the earth. It was ringed by a metal platform and railings, topped with a squat cap of thick piping and valve-turns. Around it, pipes tangled, steel boxes hummed, a generator churned. At the far end of the cavern, three fat pipes scaled the wall. When she could see those, she knew her eyes had adjusted to the dimness.

Furiosa left the room for metal stairs leading to the well platform. It was cold as a desert night in here. She had only been here a handful of times, and that only after she and the Sisters had claimed the Citadel. Each time, she felt like the place was on the edge of her understanding, a giant yet simple engine. Breathing the wet stone air was like drinking water.

The strange Pumps team were all on the well platform. The dwarfed form of Corpus was propped on a litter between two War Pups, in consultation with the History Man, breezy in a white waist wrap and a body entirely covered in written tattoos. A few young-looking blackthumbs were stowing gear. One of them pointed to her on the stairway, and they all stopped talking.

An echo caught Furiosa’s voice. “You wanted to talk to someone before the Council meeting tomorrow.”

The History Man called up, “Will Toast be joining you?”

“She’s busy. I’m here.” The two mature men exchanged a look.

Corpus said, “I’m not telling her this. You tell her.” While Furiosa came down the stairs, he gave a hand signal. His serving War Pups clustered around him, protectively.

The History Man, unconcerned, walked right up to Furiosa. For a leathery scrap of a person, he had a deep voice. “We have results, though I don’t imagine you’ll be pleased. The Council asked us to find a good place to farm within two kilometres of the Citadel. There isn’t one. The soil is no longer viable due to groundwater drawdown and salt buildup. You would say the earth is sour.”

The Dag was going to explode when she heard this. "Anywhere further out isn't secure," she said. “We need to grow more.”

“There have been people here for thirty thousand oldyears, and they never farmed this land. Ever,” sighed the History Man.

Corpus snapped, “Will you stop with that? The soil outside is salt, and watering it doesn’t fix it – the water brings up the salt. You’re stuck with container growing. Get your garden goddess replacement for my Dad to wave her hands over them.”

The History Man cleared his throat. “The soil is salt _because_ of the Citadel’s pumping. Here is the Citadel.” He held up one fist. “Here is the area the Council asked to farm.” He drew a circle in the air around it, with his other hand. “And here is the area made dry and salt by the pumping.” He drew a wider circle. Furiosa understood.

“What would they have done before?”

“Good question. Drilled another well, somewhere else, one of the many stabs that killed the world. Or prayed for rain. Rain…restores the balance. Tell me, when did it last rain?” asked the History Man.

There was a very long silence. “There is an alternative,” the History Man began.  
  
“Not the abo thing,” groaned Corpus. “He wants to tell the Council we should all live like savages. Head to the bush that's left in the far south and wander around eating grubs. Tell him it’s not on. Shut this down, before the Council hears it. I know you can,” Corpus pleaded.

The History Man barrelled on. “They were complex people who lived simply. This Citadel is simple people clinging to complex toys. Sooner or later, they will break.” He opened his hands to Furiosa. “Would you walk away from the Citadel, the cars and the generators and the pumps, if it would help heal the world?”

“Leave the Citadel.” Furiosa turned away and leaned against the railing. Her prosthetic’s metal was channelling the Wellhead’s chill to her bones.

“You’ll all be leaving the Citadel eventually. If not you, then your children’s children. Historically, these desert communities –“

Corpus interrupted. “You’re making this too Joe-damn complicated. These things aren’t even the problem.”

Furiosa took a deep breath and stalled. “ _Both_ of you are going to explain everything about this to the Council tomorrow. The soil, the water, the – the thirty thousand oldyears. Leave your arguments out of it. This is too important. You’ll have a full hour.”

The blackthumbs and empty-handed War Pups reacted with the V8 salute. The History Man touched two fingers to his brow in a wry salute. “Where does the sun stand now, Imperator?”

“I haven’t seen it in a while.”

One of the young blackthumbs shocked her by hopping down from the well platform to the stone and cracking open a door. It opened to the red ground and the day.

“How long has that been here? That’s a risk.” Furiosa sprang down to look. The drop outside the door was only the height of a man. “I’ll check it from the outside. Lock this when I’m through.” She sank down and swung out.

The heat hit Furiosa like a searing wall, and landing winded her more than she expected. As she breathed, the Wasteland horizon caught her eye, blurred with its own dust. Glancing back at the Citadel, she saw the young blackthumb peer out. A girl, unexpectedly, marked with a serious cleft lip, who had to be new. She lifted a hand to Furiosa and sealed the door. Its outside was wired with chunks of red sandstone, which was something.

Furiosa found herself alone where the eastern base of the Citadel faced the Wasteland. The ground, here, drifted in flowing ripples. She recalled the flat dirt of the Green Place. Dirt that stayed where you put it. Did what you needed it to. That you never thought about, because it was the dirt under your feet. Furiosa knelt and ran a handful of the Citadel ground through her fingers. It was soft and loose, almost pure sand. Unreliable.

Furiosa walked, slowly, following the drifts, heading south. A great spur of cliff flanged off the southeast of the formation, and she stayed in its late afternoon shade. She didn’t see any more of the rock-covered doors. The solitude cleared her head.

Before she had betrayed the Immortan, when they’d called her the Bag of Nails, she had been alone in the Citadel’s crowds and shadows. She had never expected to be the nail that held it together. Every action weighed her down more, the deeper she engaged. Looking up, Furiosa could see the haze of green at the Citadel’s apex. It was the other side of the Citadel’s weight: the more she engaged, the more she felt that green inside herself. She considered the girls, the women, the War Boys, the suddenly human Wretched.

When she reached the edge, where south began to curve into north, Furiosa looked out. As expected, there was a pair of sentries. Beyond them, on the stony plain, she saw a dark, low wedge of a lone vehicle. The sentries were looking at the vehicle, not her. She recognized it from forty days ago. Furiosa came forwards, to the edge of the Citadel’s shadow, and peered at Max.

The first time Max had gone, slipping off the Treadmill, he’d been back later that afternoon, with the History Man. He’d left again the next day, twitching at the Citadel’s stones, with a bike and all the gear he’d accept. The second time, he’d come back with two Vuvalini survivors and an additional bike, and managed two nights, to leave at dawn. On his third return, after longer away, the bike had been upgraded to a brushed-steel car somewhere, with a demented blackthumb laughing in the back seat. That was the time she’d realized: he was good at the Wasteland.

He could stay anywhere he wanted to, she figured. A solid fighter backed up with health, a voice of reason when he was up for talking. He had reasons to find other refuge than the Citadel. She’d seen the blurred skull-brand on the back of his neck. There was steel in his eyes whenever he was around War Boys. It would be a long time before the Citadel would be clean enough that she could ask him to stay, without knowing the answer already.

Max looked alone. The car had a little camp beside it, shaded by a tarp, and it made her chest ache. A storm could take it. She was reminded of wanderers threatened or trashed in the name of the Immortan. He might be, too. His car was pointing away from the sentinels, towards the open plain.

An idea thrummed inside her, like fresh blood. A compromise to build the Citadel on, clear-eyed as the Ace could want.

Some kind of redemption.

It wasn’t done yet.

If Max said yes. The only reason he might was that he had returned.

She left the shadow of the Citadel to eat up the ground with her long stride.

One of the sentries turned when she was almost on them, and flailed into a V8 salute in shock. “Watch both directions, next time,” she fired, going past them. “Stay. I’ve got this.”

By the time she got there, the camp’s occupant was standing, recognizable, scruffy.

“Max,” she said.

* * *

Max had been watching Furiosa approach in amazement. “You’re alone.”

“Yes.”

Seeing her free of War Boys, Max almost smiled.

He gestured to the tarp. Furiosa folded her legs under her to sit in its thin shade. He dropped across from her.

She was taking in the camp and him, and Max stared right back. Every time he’d returned, she had been more Furiosa. Today she even wore a scrim of desert dust. Her scarred right eyelid opened lower now (she still had the eye, good). Her high right cheekbone remained dented (was she eating enough?). Her neckline showed an edge of untanned shoulder (remembering her leaning on him, wounded, tender-skinned, he had to look away).

Max could hear her breathing, a touch harder than she should. He held out a plastic bottle that held a handspan of beige water.

Furiosa’s slight sunburn darkened. “I don’t have – this was reckless, coming out without anything.”

“You gave me a lot.”

Furiosa accepted the water and drank exactly a quarter of it. “Goes around, comes around. Any news from Gastown?” She offered the bottle back to Max.

He took it and drank, exactly as she had. He was about to talk a lot. “Up in their tower, they’ve gone through a big leader shuffle. A lot of blood. Whenever Citadel trucks came, they did the tanker swaps well away, pretending business as usual. Last thing they wanted was to spook you. Done and dusted, now. The Wasteland doesn’t care, the guzzoline’s still coming. Everyone’s watching their back.” He gave her a good minute to take this in, then asked, “How’s it here?”

“Couple skirmishes. Our deal with the Rock Riders seems tight. We’re short on fighters. So. We let the Buzzards steal some food and water that our Infirmary contaminated. See any Buzzards out there?”

Max’s smile finished surfacing. “That’s good.”

“The Council’s good. It’s a smarter Citadel.”

“Gastown’s wised up as well. Not sure if that’s good.” They shared another contemplative silence.

Finally, Furiosa said, “We’ll find out. Me and others from the Council will be there in fifteen days, right before the Amnesty fills the place. They want to keep trading. We want to work out a deal.”

“You need the guzz,” Max said, flatly.

Strangely, Furiosa did not agree immediately. “I need to see something first. When the sun goes down more, I should head out a klick or two.”

Max stood. “I can take you.” He kicked down his camp, in less time than he’d given her to mull over the Gastown news, and opened the car’s passenger door.

He hadn’t been in a vehicle with her since the road war, let alone a vehicle of his. It felt natural. The combination of movement and peace kept him composed, a smaller version of his circuits since the road war: come in, add another life or two to the count of survivors instead of ghosts, wheel back out. Made him almost feel like a survivor himself, again.

A flat, smooth spot looked good to Furiosa. She got out and looked at the ground. Kneeling, she sifted the desert dust through her living fingers. “Got anything I can dig with?”

Max opened his door and handed over a tool, and watched as Furiosa knelt, adjusted her prosthetic, and began to dig. After a few minutes excavating sand, she hit the hard layer beneath, and stabbed at it a few times. If she’d been looking for a cache, it was gone. Giving the hardpack a final, disgusted stab, she wiped some blown dust away from her mouth. Then, she rocked back onto her heels, lips parted, eyes gone tight.

Max scrambled out of the car, unholstering his pistol to cover her, but he couldn’t see anything. He had to ask, “What?”

She muttered, “Tastes like salt.”

This sounded normal. Max shrugged. “Back?”

Despite dusting off her hands and getting back in the car, she said, “Not yet.” Max glanced at her. Something was still wrong, on the inside.

He had parked facing the Citadel. Its shadows slanted long in the westering sun. Small dust devils skirled on the plain between them and the rocks. “Is it all working?”

Furiosa straightened herself. “Getting cleaned up. We emptied out Joe’s lockdown and bricked it off. Now I’m trying to mop up chrome users and shut down blood fights.” To his baffled look, she said, wearily, “You don’t want to know.” He raised an eyebrow. “I can do it. It’s the things I can’t do that keep me up at night.”

“We’re maxed out with what we’re growing. There’s hungry people out there. The Citadel sends some food down. Not enough, yet. I asked for the pumps-and-soil team to find us land to grow on near the Citadel. They said it wouldn’t work. The earth is salt.”

“How do they live? They get water, right, but…food?”

“There’s some foraging. They say it hasn’t been good lately. The salt ground explains why.” Furiosa took her most uncomfortable-sounding breath yet. “They also do this thing. With human bodies. Some days it seemed like the one thing the Citadel had that made us civilized, not doing that. We might send some down. Better than watching people starve.”

Max rolled this around for a moment. “You won’t kill them to send them?” Furiosa shook her head.

He went stiff with a hundred memories. All he could manage was, “I know how it is. When you have to. Doesn’t even taste that good.” Immediately, he cringed at his own words.

She gasped with sudden, cracked laughter that tapered off after a moment. “Hope the Council feels the same way tomorrow.”

Encouraged, Max tried again. “I only saw one place like the Citadel. It fell apart. All the things you’re fighting with now. Knowing how to run the works, keeping people together, feeding everyone. It’s too much.”

“There’s a Council. It has to work. Unless…” Furiosa turned towards him, leaned in. “Toast told me something important. The History People, they traveled all over, together. Everywhere they went, it became worse and worse, they tried to cross the Salt, they returned to where it had been green before. Nothing. You already sent me – sent us – back here, once. I need to ask again. Is it that bad everywhere? What we saw where the Green Place should be? Nowhere near here…anywhere else?”

That, again. She was as compulsed as he was. Looking at her eyes, he said, “Not the sea.”

“I’ve never been to the sea. They say it’s dried up.”

Max flinched. “You don’t wanna go. You really, really don’t.”

“Where do you keep _going_?”

“Just…around.” He tried to explain. “Up here is hot and dry, but it’s where the guzz is, and spare metal. Parts. You live by your car or bike, you come here. If you make it.” He gripped the wheel of the car. “I don’t know how else to be.”

She leaned back onto her headrest. “I was ready to try. When I took the Wives from the Citadel, I knew that I’d be parking the Rig and walking away sometime. Without any more guzz. I’d have to stop using the engine in this arm.” Max was silenced again.

Furiosa lifted her chin. “The Citadel’s going to die, I’m told. The waterworks won’t last. But it’s going to live, first. We’ve got a few lifetimes.”

“Would you look for something for us, when you go? Wherever you go. I know you’ll go.” Max leaned in to hear her softened voice. The light of the descending sun caught her eyes, her brow. “We need to find out if there’s a place to go if this all falls apart. Or if we walked away from the Citadel.”

Max had felt a gyro turning inside his chest since Furiosa sat down, tilting between the long road’s forgetting and Furiosa. It suddenly paused, balanced, at the possibility of the road for Furiosa. The road _and_ Furiosa. Once he found the road. He swallowed. “I’d have to go further.”

“South,” they both said.

Max leaned in further to point at the back of the car. “Let’s say I had some extra tanks, here, and another spare tire.”

Their shoulders almost touched as she turned, too. “Could ask about some rations for you at the Council, tomorrow.”

“Not what you gave the Buzzards, m’kay?”

This time, they both laughed, raw and brief.

“I could tag you down to Gastown. Watch your back there, then head south.”

“That’s fifteen days away.”

“I’ll manage. Camp in closer.”

He heard her startled inhale. “For fifteen days.”

“Mph.”

“Come on in tonight? You need water. There’s the Sisters. And I want to ask you about some salvage. Found some of Joe’s private stashes.”

“Salvage?” If she could laugh, at last, Max could, too. “Isn’t it all.”

“That’s about right. If we’re lucky.”

They closed the doors. Max turned the car around in a slow circle, running tire tracks over the ground that had disappointed Furiosa. He glanced out at the waste as he drove, caught Furiosa’s hopeful profile, then took a deep breath to face the Citadel again.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a Mad Max Kink meme fill (http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=1022402#cmt1022402) - "Bonus Points for Aquifer not being endless"- and changed along the way.
> 
> Note that the term _abo_ to refer to Aboriginal Australians is considered insulting, and is used in a negative context here. The author wishes to note her respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty of the traditional people of Australia.
> 
> Yep, another T.S. Eliot reference in the title, from _The Waste Land_. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust. "


End file.
